Published: Sunday, May 12, 2013 at 05:23 PM.

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Leanne Catoe cut her mother’s hair Saturday so Vivian Schronce would look special for church this Mother’s Day Sunday.

“I sat in church beside her, and I had this weird feeling and I scooted closer to her,” Catoe said.

After church Catoe’s 80-year-old motherkissed her and told her to come by for pot pie.

Catoe drove to the grocery store and saw an ambulance go by as she headed back to her mother’s home. A sick feeling settled in her stomach. Catoe hurried to her mother’s home to find paramedics doing CPR on her mother.

“And all I could say was, ‘God, no. God, no.’ And then we get to the hospital and they said that she’d been shot,” Catoe said. “Why would anybody shoot a grandmother, a great-grandmother?”

Leanne Catoe cut her mother’s hair Saturday so Vivian Schronce would look special for church this Mother’s Day Sunday.

“I sat in church beside her, and I had this weird feeling and I scooted closer to her,” Catoe said.

After church Catoe’s 80-year-old motherkissed her and told her to come by for pot pie.

Catoe drove to the grocery store and saw an ambulance go by as she headed back to her mother’s home. A sick feeling settled in her stomach. Catoe hurried to her mother’s home to find paramedics doing CPR on her mother.

“And all I could say was, ‘God, no. God, no.’ And then we get to the hospital and they said that she’d been shot,” Catoe said. “Why would anybody shoot a grandmother, a great-grandmother?”

Gaston County Police believe Charles Edwin Venn, 88, who also lived at 128 Venn Drive, Gastonia, fired the shot that claimed her mother’s life. Venn faces a first-degree murder charge in Schronce’s death.

Gaston County Police Capt. Jay Human said Schronce came back from church and the two started arguing. Venn drank a couple beers that morning and they were fighting over it, police said. Venn had a handgun and fired several rounds. One shot struck Schronce.

GastonCountyCommunicationsCenter received a 911 call about a woman in cardiac arrest at 12:22 p.m. She was taken to CaroMontRegionalMedicalCenter, formerly GastonMemorialHospital, and pronounced dead there.

Venn told police the two lived together as roommates. Neither had been in trouble with the law before.

“Any time you add alcohol and firearms, it’s just a deadly mixture,” Human said.

Schronce was a kidney cancer survivor and a caretaker, Catoe said.

“My mom cared for everybody — everybody. That’s all I’ve ever known her to do,” Catoe said. “We called her Florence Nightingale.”

People in PineGroveTrailer Park off Hickory Grove Road called Schronce “Grandma.”

A Gaston County Jail cell holds Venn. He’s being held without bond because of the murder charge. Catoe’s still in shock that her mother is gone and says her death just doesn’t make sense.

“She’s all I had,” Catoe said. “I’m not ready to be the matriarch of this family.”

You can reach reporter Amanda Memrick at 704-869-1839 or follow @AmandaMemrick on Twitter.